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July 16, 2009 by Niyanta

The Wheels are Turning!

The first US-based volunteers for Rainforest Partnership arrived in Lima, Peru Tuesday! Austin-based lawyer, Marisa Perales, will assist the RP team in conducting research regarding a multitude of local legal issues and facilitating meetings with organizations and government entities; Rob Richardson, an Austin-based teacher, will focus more on the local level regarding markets for handicrafts, horticulture research, and ways to link musicians, artists and students in the community with people here in Austin. Executive Director, Niyanta Spelman, will be meeting them in Peru next month to follow-up with the handicrafts project and management plan in Chipaota.

Niyanta will be on the ground to continue developing the project plan with the Sani Isla community in Ecuador, and also assess the potential for a project in the Satipo Road area (District of Pampa Hermosa) of Peru. She will be joined by Board Chair Hazel Barbour in Ecuador, and later by Board Secretary Jordan Erdos in Peru. The RP team will be accompanied by exciting volunteers and in-country team members to showcase the progress of the projects and continue building partnerships with local groups. These individuals include Austinite filmmaker, Michel Scott, who will be working on a documentary focusing on the Chipaota project and the Sani Isla project. Michel is an accomplished director and cinematographer and you can learn more about his recent stunning film, The Horse Boy, by clicking here.

RP’s projects will also be displayed behind the unique lens of a Swedish photojournalism team consisting of Martin Edström and Alfred Runow. You can follow Martin and Alfred’s relationship with Rainforest Partnership through Project Carpe Diem and read their blog, connect with them on Facebook, and receive new updates via Twitter. Congratulations to them for just receiving new sponsorships this week! The group will also be joined by Lucia Eslava, our program coordinator, and Jaso Rojas Angulo, project manger, who are both based in Peru.

We are so excited to have all of these incredible people joining us on our trip! This meeting is a true demonstration of the ability to create a more sustainable future by working together. We will keep reporting the progress of all of the project initiatives throughout the next two months so stay tuned!

July 15, 2009 by Lucia

Community Assembly in Mushuck Llacta de Chipaota

Our latest community assembly took place this Sunday July 12 at 8:30 am. The Apu (village chief), Don Prospero Cenepo Tapullima, invited the Rainforest Partnership technical team to participate in the assembly, which touched upon a diverse array of community issues. We informed the villagers and partners about the progress of the management plan of piazaba, which was submitted to INRENA last month.Jaso Angulo, the program manager for the paizaba project, informed everyone of the procedure we followed for the submission of the management plan document to INRENA. He explained the data that were processed (including data we collected in the field with community members), comments from INRENA, and the need to hire an INRENA-certified engineer to sign necessary paperwork. Finally, we presented a copy of the submitted document to the Apu, as a guide for the community and the piazaba producers. We explained the current state of the management plan and the procedure to follow prior to receiving permission to extract the fiber.

The members of the community inquired about the necessity of the specialist from INRENA to install the management plan. They also asked how much time it could take for the response from INRENA. Here we clarified that we had investigated the existence of a legal alternative while we were awaiting INRENA approval. We also mentioned that the president of the regional government is aware of this project and is going to make his best efforts to try to speed up this process to benefit the community, which is ready to start this work.We also talked about RP’s interest in continuing to support the sustainable development of Mushuck Llacta de Chipaota, since we could see the good organization and participation of the community during the development of the project.

Then we detailed the two projects that RP will continue to support, which are the implementation of the management plan of the piazaba and the artesan project. We mentioned the objectives, the method of work, and we made a general invitation to all of the members of the community (men and women) of Mushuck Llacta to participate in these projects, which will occur through December.Finally, we informed the villagers about the arrival of members of RP and their guest documentarians who will come to Tarapoto, Mushuck Llacta, and also visit the areas of piazaba production in the forest.

The villagers agreed to coordinate receiving the group. As a result of the community assembly, we had the acceptance of 100% of the attending villagers for RP to continue supporting them in the implementation of the management plan with the help of Jaso, in the development of the project, and artesan businesses with Lucia.

Chipaota / Projects — No Comments

June 2, 2009 by Jordan Erdos

Climate Change on the Move

A few years ago, I was fortunate to catch Sebastião Salgado’s exhibition Migrations, a photodocumentary survey of human population movement. Many of the photos showed strong but desperate people far from home and clueless to what the future might hold for them. Salgado captured the indominable human spirit, but also the pathos of the journey migrants face when they leave — most likely are forced to leave — their native lands.In addition to the difficulty migrants face when they are uprooted from their homes, there is the added complication of the effect of thousands of people settling in a new country or region. Already pressed for resources, areas receiving the migrants are hard-pressed to find solutions to the sudden increase in population. Once sustainable economic models may rapidly be found to be untenable with the changing circumstances.The International Organization for Migration, a Swiss intergovernmental organization established in 1951, has just released a policy brief Migration, Climate Change and the Environment, which documents the effect migration is having and is expected to have on the environment. The report states that global climate change is having a clear effect on migration as vital resources diminish and human populations are forced to seek them elsewhere. A widely-cited study indicates up to 200 million people could be on the move due to environmental factors by 2050.What will be the result of all of this movement? Will resource-rich areas be able to absorb the migrating populations with minimal difficulty or will the sudden inflow of environmental refugees overwhelm the resource-rich areas, leading to a potential prolonged struggle for access to those resources by heterogeneous populations?We must transform how people think about the environment and environmentalism. We are no longer looking solely at questions of local conservation, endangered species, or human health. Global climate change is altering the very foundations of human societies and resource management. It is imperative we continue to address the human-related causes of global climate change and raise awareness of its drastic effects upon the whole of humanity.

Environmental News & Discussion — 2 Comments